I opened my new cellphone, put the battery in it, and started charging the thing. From the battery meter, it was already a good 3/4 charged. Reading the instructions while charging it, I discovered I should have put in something called a sim card first since the little compartment I drop that in is right under the battery and can't be put in or removed without the battery being out of the phone.

So I go through the stuff that was sent with my phone and find the sim card. It's this little thing attached to a piece of plastic the size and shape of a credit card. I carefully pry the sim card off of the bigger piece of plastic. Then I take the phone off the charger, pull the battery out again, take a sec to figure out the tiny door that had to be open for the sim card, pop in the card, and put the battery and phone back together again.

Next, I stop to figure out where the on button is in the thing (had to resort to reading the user manual for that since the on button doesn't say "on." Turns out the power button is the same as the end call button. Well, I turn it on, and see that the few minutes I had it on the charger brought the battery up to full power.

Cool! Ok, in between all this I made a few attempts to call my cellphone company so they could activate it and transfer my phone number and minutes using my land line phones. First time I tried on my cordless phone (which I rarely use). After I go through the "press one for English, press one again for activating a new phone and transferring minutes," .... yadda yadda, ... "There is an estimated 5 minute wait for a customer service representative." Fine I can handle ... I don't even get to finish that thought when the battery on my cordless phone dies, and I'm cut off.

grr. Ok, I redial on my corded phone. Go through all the menu options again. "There is an estimated half hour wait for a customer service representative." WTF? A few minutes ago it was only 5 minutes.

So I'm on hold for I don't know how long. To pass the time I start playing in the menu of my new cellphone, and discover the games in it. I need both hands to press the buttons to play those games, so I just explore other menu options. Setting the clock to display 24 hour time and set it to automatically update the time (for some reason it was set so that the time and date needed to be set manually).

I also discovered a demo submenu where there are several basic tutorials for different features of the phone. I watched most of them while on hold, and the rest later in the day. All of those demos are not only explaining how to do the obvious, they are also mind numbingly boring.

Well, finally, a lady with an Urdu accent (prob. in Pakistan although I didn't ask her) speaking broken English answers and first talks me through a series of codes that deactivates my old phone, then another series of codes that activates and transfers my cellphone number and minutes to the new phone (plus 13 more minutes and one extra month too than I had with the old phone). All and all the above took most of the afternoon.

Well, I next had to reset my voicemail for the phone. That took several more minutes.

Naturally, I wanted to use the phone now that all the setup was done. It was too early to call H without interrupting her at work. So I sent her a text message. In doing so, I messed up the setting where the phone tries guessing the word I want to use in text messages.

I need to figure out how to get that back, but I played with the set up enough; so that will be a future task. Oh, and on my old phone I was charged a half a minute for text messages sent or received. With the new phone, it seems to charge me only .3 minutes per text message. Not only am I getting an upgrade, I'm getting a lower text message charge too!

Then I checked the stored phone numbers in my old phone and decided 6 of those numbers needed to be transferred to the new phone (a couple more prob. should be written down, but not transferred before getting rid of that phone).

3 of those 6 are the numbers I have for H. Her cell and home phone as well as the number I have for her work phone (although this last one I think I've only called twice and that was years and years ago).

Ring tones were my next priority. I went through the 35 ones that came with the phone (plus I can add 5 more custom tones, which I prob. won't ... anyway, I went through them) with the idea of needing to pick at least 3 (one for H, one for Mom, and one default one, with maybe a 4th for incoming text messages). I discovered that on this phone the vibrating feature works with the sounds (and even vibrates in rhythm to whatever tone is playing too). That was neat.

Although, it lead me to a question I still haven't bothered to try answering. How do I easily switch this phone between the normal rings and vibrate only? With my old phone, when I was in crowds or loud environments I would turn that to just vibrate so as not to disturb those around me if I got a call/message. [update: figured it out. There is a submenu in settings called profiles -- Just switch between the normal profile and the lights only one]

Well anyway, I went through all the ring tones, and settled on a default one; "Message 4" plays for any caller whom I haven't assigned a special ring tone for. This tone sounded the most like a normal phone ring to me (whatever a normal ring is nowadays).

Next I picked a tone for H. I debated between the one called Amazement (a voice speaking the word woo with an echo effect to make it sound like a crowd is actually speaking it) or the song "Come Fill me in." I settled on Amazement. Since "woo!" captures how I feel when I talk with her.

As much trouble as I had picking a ring for H, it was triple that for Mom. I seriously debated between the bullfrog and Cuckoo rings (sounding like a frog croaking and a cuckoo clock respectively). I finally settled on a ring called Espionage after Fawn voiced her opinion that she did not like the bullfrog tone and would not stand the cuckoo ring at all.

Ring tones decided, I started playing in the menu again. There is a feature called "memory in use." I can switch it between the sim card and the phone itself. I played with that setting and forgot which it was to start with. I've got it set on using the phone's memory right now, but there is a nagging worry I messed that setting up. [update: I just did a google search of sim cards, and after figuring out they store phone settings, contact lists, and whatnots of phone memory stuff making that info easier to transfer to other phones, I think I will flip that setting the other way again.]

Moving on, I went over to Mom's and she needed me to go grocery shopping for her. Coming back from grocery shopping, my new phone started ringing as I was bringing in a bunch of groceries (and vibrating too since that goes off with the ring sound -- wee!).

Well, anyway, I had my hands full, and from having already done the custom ring thing, I knew it wasn't H or Mom since I was hearing the default ring rather than the special ones for either of them. By the time I was able to set down all the bags I was carrying and pull the phone out of my pocket, whoever it was had hung up. I didn't recognize the number.

I just did a reverse lookup of that number. It was a cellphone registered in Joliet, IL. Hmm, while I do have relatives in that area, I don't think any of them know my cell number, and I'm pretty sure they'd be calling Mom's land line before they'd even try contacting me at all.